Our hurricane track models need educating, Rita shows

Predicting Rita:

"Alexander E. ('Sandy') MacDonald, Director of NOAA's Forecast Systems Laboratory in Boulder, CO, says a more precise model is in the works that would allow for sharper predictions.

"But getting it ready for deployment will require more computation and research dollars. 'We have a ways to go,' he tells Technology Review's Chief Correspondent, David Talbot, who interviewed him this week."

More robust modeling of hurricane tracks would be of great benefit in two ways. A public perception that the predicted tracks are accurate should encourage a higher proportion of persons in targeted areas to evacuate when advised to do so. And, more accurate prediction would mean fewer persons advised to evacuate, and discourage people unlikely to be hit from evacuating anyway, and these factors would reduce the cost of evacuations and put less strain on shelters and hotels in the areas to which persons are told to evacuate.

NOAA's MacDonald points out that we only spend about $50 million per year on hurricane tracking. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the economic cost of evacuating people who could safely stay home, let alone the human costs of people who should evacuate and don't because they lack confidence in the predictions. He wants to at least double that budget to make it possible to gather more data on each storm as it progresses and to run larger and more detailed computer models.

[Note: The awkward title is a cinematic reference, not a good one, but I do love movies and this one wasn't awful.]